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His eyes took her in from feet to knees to loins, and up where he lingered at her breasts. Bea felt his desire follow that warm rain like delicious sun. Mmm, come here, hungry wolf.
“But all creatures wear clothing in the mortal realm,” he said. “So. You need clothes.”
“And combs and jewelry, shoes and purses. Makeup. Perfumes. All that girl stuff. And to get that I’m going to need some mortal cash. Please tell me you have bajillions of the stuff.”
“Bajillions?” Another soft chuckle. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Bea’s shoulders sank, as did her wings.
“But I am comfortable, as they say. You won’t starve or be forced to live in a cardboard box anytime soon. I promise.”
A cardboard box? Did mortals do that? Bea shivered. She’d once had an aunt who would curl up to live in a crustacean shell. Ugh.
“What’s your job?” she asked. “Brit said something about you being an enforcer. Is that like a wolf cop?”
“In essence. Our pack polices the werewolf packs in Paris. Keeps an eye on them. Investigates the blood games and tries to ensure that no wolf makes the front page of Le Monde. That’s the local world newspaper.”
“Cool. So when do you have to guard the portal to Faery?”
“Not sure. Etienne, my pack principal, suggested I probably would not, since I’ve already gotten—”
“The short stick. I remember. You’ve sacrificed so much for your pack. Taking on a wife who is actually interested in having sex with you whenever you desire? Whew! That is so tough. I shed tears of pity for you, wolf.”
“Whenever I desire?” The wolf’s eyes twinkled. Actually twinkled.
“Pretty much.” She fluttered her wings.
“I thought you hated me.”
“Oh, I do.” She crossed her arms and tucked her wings down tightly, a forced show of dislike. Her new hubby’s chuckle made it difficult to keep her nose up and her back straight. So she put her wings away. “Wings are too much for you to handle.”
“I bet they are. I can take you shopping later,” he said. “Uh, you might need to wear something of mine, though.”
“I do have my wedding dress.”
“Which was so sheer every wolf in my pack blushed.”
“Not cool for shopping?”
He shook his head. “Paris may be avant-garde when it comes to fashion, but I don’t think it’s quite ready for a half-naked faery. Look through my closet and see what you can find.”
“You are twice as big as me. You’re troll size. Dwarf troll, at least. And I’m not keen on working the leather. You know an animal used to wear those pants before you decided to tug them on? But I’ll see what I can do. So, you got time for a quickie before you go back to work?”
He quirked a brow. “I thought you hated me.”
“Oh, I do. But I like this.” She danced up to him and drew her fingers down his chest and tapped his cock through the leather pants. “You saying you don’t like this?” Flinging her hair with a tilt of her head, she thrust back her shoulders, proudly displaying her breasts.
The wolf lunged and encircled her in his arms, his mouth landing on her nipple. Bea squealed in delight as he lifted her and laid her on the couch. “I have time,” he said.
* * *
Jacques always rode shotgun and, yet, mastered the radio when they were out on a job. He’d flicked the radio to a rap station, so Kir had turned the volume down. They compromised like a married couple.
Is that what marriage was about? Compromise? Seemed to Kir he and Bea got along just fine. When naked together. An afternoon quickie had put him in a great mood. Even if work was intense.
He’d heard about a pack in a northern banlieue, a city suburb, that was into something weird, and vampires were dying in stranger ways than the usual starvation, death by blood loss, or fighting to the death that some packs had a tendency to inflict upon them. They’d received a frantic phone call from a vampiress who was not in a tribe. Her boyfriend had escaped imprisonment from a pack and now lay on her floor, puking up black blood.
They arrived at the address in record time. Kir shifted the vehicle into Park and looked to Jacques, who smirked and stared at his hair. “What?”
“My man, you sparkle.”
“I— What?”
Jacques couldn’t hide his goofy grin. “So I guess it’s true what they say about faeries when they come, eh?”
What the hell did they say about faeries coming? And who were they?
Bea had come quickly this afternoon on the couch—ah. Kir glanced in the rearview mirror. Sunlight glinted in his hair. He slapped at the faery dust. “It’s all over me.”
“It has been since you came in this morning, but it looks like more since that quick stop at home.” Jacques’s laugh thundered inside the car.
The stuff was hard to get off, and he had some smeared above his temple. Still, he didn’t regret the quickie. Though he wasn’t going to allow Jacques one more moment of mirth.
He slammed his hand up under his friend’s jaw and silenced his laughter. “One more chuckle and you’ll be chewing spine.”
Jacques put up his hands in defeat and Kir dropped him immediately. It was an empty threat. They both knew the other would never hold good on a promise to violence, teasing or otherwise.
“Is it that noticeable? Maybe I shouldn’t go inside.”
“You got most of it off. Call it a night at the club. Let’s go in and check this out. Vamp shields up?”
“Activated,” Kir replied. Since childhood the two of them had shared an aversion to vampires and had playfully pulled an invisible shield of protection over themselves when they’d play vampires and werewolves.
If only he could do as much with his wife.
A wolf should be more upset about being married to a vampire—even if she was only half. But did a wolf who hated vampires have sex with one three times within a twenty-four-hour period? Something wrong with that.
And, yet, something so not wrong with sliding inside Bea and losing himself against her soft, petite body, drawing in her sweet perfume, drowsing him into some kind of all right.
“You coming?”
Jacques had started up the front walk while Kir was still contemplating running home for another round with his half-breed, pretty-smelling wife. But he couldn’t afford to let his thoughts stray in a vampire’s house, he thought, and followed Jacques inside. Vamp shields up, indeed. It wasn’t possible for a werewolf to do that—put up some kind of magical protection shield—but just thinking that he could bolstered his confidence. He knew to avoid the fangs, and the cross on the stake he’d stuck in his back pocket gave him reassurance.
A male vampire, probably late twenties, lay on the kitchen floor in a pool of black liquid. It looked like blood, but Kir couldn’t be sure what it was. Vampires bled red blood. Demons, and a handful of other species, bled black. And the victim’s girlfriend, who was sprawled beside his body, insisted he was all vamp, formerly a mortal who had been attacked and turned only a year ago by a tribe of vampires that had then abandoned him.
“Is he going to live?” the blonde with a skimpy top that emphasized her narrow waistline asked. Her red-painted fingernails were stained with the black substance that seeped from her boyfriend’s mouth.
Kir looked to Jacques. His friend’s brow lifted. Both knew the answer. And was the vampiress blind? Her boyfriend was literally skin and bones, starved to the marrow. They could see his veins, and those veins were not plump with blood. And what was he coughing up in thick black globs?
“You got a stake?” Jacques muttered.
“Of course.”
“What?” the girlfriend shrieked. “I trusted you guys!”
Kir grabbed the woman by the arms, trying to settle her. “Your boyfriend is not going to survive. He’s in great pain. The stake will be a kindness. Can you understand?”
Eyes frantic and filled with tears, her lips tightened and she winced. She collapsed against his chest, her breaths heaving out. Her fingernails dug into his arms, but she wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was trying to accept.
Kir couldn’t relate to such a painful loss. And then he could. His father had left him and his sister when they were little. He could never fill that hole left behind in his soul.
Just when he reached to put a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder, she stood up and whispered, “I’ll get something.” When she returned to the room, she handed a stake to Kir. It had a pair of initials carved on it. “It was a backup in case either of us wanted to jump ship. He didn’t ask for vampirism. He wanted the stake months ago, but I begged him to stay alive for me.”
The vampire on the floor whispered, “I love you,” to the vampiress. And then he said, “Get them. The...the...”
Kir and Jacques both bent close, hoping the vampire would give them a clue that would lead to the pack that had kidnapped him.
“The what? Who?” Jacques urged. “Can you tell me what pack did this to you?”
“The...denizen...” The vampire’s body stiffened, his muscles tightening and his jaw snapping shut.
“The denizen?” Jacques looked to Kir.
Denizen was a term for a group or gathering of demons. The very idea of demons being involved caused Kir’s jaw to tense. The last breed he wanted to deal with was demons.
The girlfriend grabbed the stake from Kir’s hand. Before he could take it from her to perform the offensive task, she lunged over her boyfriend and staked him in the heart. Jacques grabbed for her, but it was too late. They’d get nothing more from the pile of ash.
While the girlfriend wept over the ash, Jacques and Kir stepped outside the house. “Demons?” Kir asked. “So, this isn’t werewolves?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if it’s not, it’s not our problem.”
“Right.” Kir clenched and unclenched his fists. “Let’s give her a minute, then see if she’ll let us search his things for clues.”
The wolves waited out on the front step until the sobbing settled. A half hour later, quietly and respectfully, they went through the house but found nothing of use for the investigation.
“You have a safe place to go for a while?” Kir asked the vampiress.
“You think they’ll come after me? The pack?”
“Not sure. Why do you think he was taken by a pack? He said something about a denizen. That’s demons.”
She shrugged. “He’d mentioned something about a wolf following him a few days before he disappeared. I assumed.”
“Usually the packs grab a vamp off the street. I don’t know what the hell your boyfriend was coughing up. Or what a wolf could have done to him to make that happen.”
She nodded. “I have a friend who will let me stay with her. Thank you.”
“You shouldn’t thank us for what happened here.”
Her eyes wandered to the stake sitting on the pile of ash. “I couldn’t have done it alone. I wish he could have been more help to you.”
“We’ll find the pack or denizen responsible for his death. I promise you that.”
Leaving her at the door, Kir joined Jacques in the car.
“Let’s hope it is demons,” Jacques said. “We have enough on our plate already.”
“I promised her we’d help her. No matter what.”
“Ah, man.”
“She’s a woman. Alone. Who lost her boyfriend.”
“She’s also a vamp, and it’s not clear wolves were responsible for that vamp’s death.”
“I’m won’t let her down.”
Jacques sighed and shifted into gear. “You and your damned sense of honor.”
Damned or not, if it wasn’t a pack, and they weren’t required to bother with this crime, Kir wanted to stand true to his word. Because he couldn’t stand back and allow anyone, even a vamp, to die for reasons unknown.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_8ca32244-509f-531b-8020-58d8667fa4db)
The faery had never been shopping before. Bea had told Kir that in Faery she could pull on a glamour to change her clothing and look, but since arriving in the mortal realm her glamour was weak and it was a no-go for clothing changes. So when she strode into the high-end clothing shop on the rue Royale, her squeal might have been heard by dogs.
As well as by wolves.
And Kir liked the sound of her joy. It went a long way in erasing the lump that sat in the pit of his stomach after the call to the vampiress’s house this afternoon. He never liked to destroy another living being or witness it. Since he wasn’t able to get in to see the doctor he’d contacted until tomorrow morning, he decided putting some clothes on his wife would relax him after a long workday.
A salesgirl with brilliant red lips to match her nails led Kir and Bea into the back area of the shop that was more private than the sales floor. He sat on the designated “boyfriend couch,” which was shaped like a huge pair of red lips, sipping champagne and refusing the chocolates offered by the cooing salesgirls while he waited for his wife to slip into the first outfit the staff deemed fitting for her.
The dressing room door opened and out wobbled a faery in a white sheath that hugged her petite figure yet went all the way up to her neck. Pink high heels, higher than the Eiffel Tower, hampered her walk as she clung to the wall and tried to stand upright and maintain a modicum of dignity.
“High heels are new to me,” she said. “Who’d have thought, eh? So is lace. There’s so...much of it. I don’t think white is my color.”
“Nope,” Kir said.
Bea’s lips dropped into a sad moue.
“I won’t lie,” he offered. “It’s too much,” he said to the saleswoman. “She’s brighter and more fun. And sexy.”
“And maybe not so tall?” Bea said as she wobbled behind the saleswoman back into the fitting room.
The next outfit was introduced with a jump as Bea landed expertly on heels half as high as the previous ones. She wore black suede thigh-high boots that were laced with white ribbons from thigh to ankle. The skimpy black dress was cut out at the torso to reveal both hips, and the neckline exposed her breasts nearly to the nipples.
“Now, this is me,” she said, sashaying before Kir. She bent over and flashed him a view up under her skirt. Hot-pink panties. “You like?”
